Kyoto Common Lisp

["Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@CMU-CS-C.ARPA>]

There has been some confusion, partly my fault, about whether the Kyoto
University version of Common Lisp is based on our portable Spice Lisp
code.  I have just received a letter from Taiichi Yuasa of Kyoto
University which makes clear that their implemenation is TOTALLY
INDEPENDENT of our code.  They did receive some early drafts of the
manual, papers, and benchmark code from us (by way of Nippon Data
General), but they did not receive any Lisp system code from us until
several months AFTER their implemenation was finished and running.  I
just wanted to set the record straight.  They apparently got this
implementation running from a standing start in five months with a team
of four people, with no direct input at all from the Common Lisp
designers -- an awesome performance.

To further clarify things, Data General has their own implemenation for
the Eclipse.  This is the one that was demonstrated at AAAI, and it IS
based on our code, though the task of porting it to Data General
hardware was done with essentially no help from CMU.

-- Scott